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Tuesday, January 23, 2018

IVY: 2011 Topps Marquee #5 Ozzie Smith

I have almost 500 cards in the Ivy collection and need to whittle down some of the numbers where I have duplicates for the Frankenset. I want to make sure each card gets its due so I've decided that over the course of a month or so, I will sprinkle in individual posts. When I have exhausted what I have for each binder page, I'll post which ones made the cut. Once I have a full page, I'll add a tab up top where you can view each page. I have multiple representatives for many of the first 99 numbers (11 full pages) which should get me through all of 2017.
I've already touched on card #4 when I received it, so moving to #5, we have yet another Hall of Famer, Ozzie Smith.

I was starting to come back around to collecting in 2011, but I didn't know about the Topps Marquee brand then. Actually, I don't know much about it know either. This appears to be a one and done set though as I don't see previous or later editions. The base set has only 100 cards and is made up of current and past players. The Cubs "team set" is just Starlin Castro and Ryne Sandberg

A Getty Images search brought up the photo used but as with a lot of the pictures from 20+ years ago, this one is undated. The Wizard of Oz played for the Cardinals from 1982-1996, however I just don't see anything or anyone in the background to help pinpoint the timeframe. Maybe somebody with Cardinals uniform knowledge could narrow that down. I took a look at Sportslogos.net but they had incomplete information for their road uniforms.

I like the card itself. Ozzie looks like he's charging a ground ball. Maybe I'm drawing a blank here, and I'm certainly not an expert, but I think this is a fairly rare type of photo. Usually a fielding photo shows the feet planted receiving the ball or mid-throw or even just standing there.

The cropping on his foot is slightly off but the brand logo and name plate are not very intrusive to the photo. The ivy is full but you can see some reddish coloring and Ozzie is wearing a long sleeve undershirt leading me to believe this would be a late season game.

His Marquee Moment on the back doesn't match the photo on the front. Fielding is shown on the front, which makes sense as that is what Ozzie is known for, but a hitting moment is blurbed about. They might not have a usable photo from that moment but a left-handed hitting pose would be closer. This lack of attention to detail is something Topps has sadly become known for, but otherwise, I wouldn't have another Ivy card. I like the design overall. It's fancy, but streamlined at the same time.

Ozzie has some competition at #5 from a former teammate and also another Hall of Famer. We'll see them later this week.

2 comments:

This is the brand's only entry in the collection but I have 7 other Ozzie Smith Ivy cards so we'll have to see if it holds up to make the Frankenset. One of his competitor's is also a lone brand representative.

About Me

I grew up watching Cubs games on WGN in the 1980's and stayed a fan all these years. I can't promise insightful analysis or future predictions for the team in this blog but I do collect Cubs memorabilia and autographs and plan to use this venue to showcase some of my goodies.